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Why AT&T Should Dump the iPhone's Unlimited Data Plan
Pickens writes
"Farhad Manjoo has a provocative story at Slate asserting that while the iPhone has prompted millions of people to join AT&T, it has also hurt the company's image because all of those customers use their phones too much, and AT&T's network is getting crushed by the demand. The typical smartphone customer consumes about 40 to 80 megabytes of wireless capacity a month, while the typical iPhone customer uses 400 MB a month. As more people sign up, local cell towers get more congested, and your own phone performs worse. He says the problem is that a customer who uses 1 MB a month pays the same amount as someone who uses 1,000 MB, and the solution is tiered pricing. 'Of course, users would cry bloody murder at first,' writes Manjoo. 'I'd call on AT&T to create automatic tiers — everyone would start out on the $10/100 MB plan each month, and your price would go up automatically as your usage passes each 100 MB tier.' He says the key to implementing the policy is transparency, and that the iPhone should have an indicator like the battery bar that changes color as you pass each monthly tier. 'Some iPhone fans will argue that metered pricing would kill the magic of Apple's phone — that sense of liberation one feels at being able to access the Internet from anywhere, at any time. The trouble is, for many of us, AT&T's overcrowded network has already killed that sense, and now our usual dealings with Apple's phone are tinged with annoyance.'"
Build more towers. Increase capacity. Uncle Sam has doled out a lot of money over the last couple decades to build infrastructure. Build it. Cut dividend payouts a little bit, and build the infrastructure up. Maybe cut executive and management pay a little bit. DUHH. And, while you're at it, maybe you can get that "last mile" built so that all Americans can get online. Tiered pricing isn't the solution. Demand is going to increase every year from now on. Get used to the idea that you need to keep adding to and improving the infrastructure. You can't take a snapshot at some arbitrary point, and say "We need this much more infrastructure, then we'll be on easy street." Invest your earnings back into the system, where it belongs - in the business.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's under application's control not users. So someone who has a single bad experience with a buggy app will dump AT&T and Apple forever. There are already horror stories abound with overseas data roaming.
Just limit long-term data speed to whatever can be sustained and provide higher burst speed for basic web browsing.
And included text messages in "data"
I'm sick of paying 35 dollars a month for "unlimited" data that I don't use, and 5 dollars for 200 (or 4 Kbs) of text messages.
Most of the time I am on a wifi network; when I am not, I don't use much data anyway.
Stick the 3 GB price point at 30 dollars, 2 at 20; 1 GB at 10, etc.
Also, it should be further tiered based on what data connection you are using. Us original iPhone users got royally screwed when AT&T upped the rates because the 3g came out.
But who am I kidding? We all know if this happened, the starting price would be 30 dollars for 200 MB of data, and an additional 10 dollars for every 100 MB.
www.GrenadeHop.com
I've had an iphone since June. Total data received is just a under 1gb, data sent is around 80mb.
Gone!
AT&T also scored lower than any other U.S. carrier in a recent customer-satisfaction survey—the first time it has ever claimed last place.
That's not the iPhone users fault: that's AT&T fault.
What's this horseshit of blaming the customer for shitting customer service, or service for that matter?!
They sold a service and an amount of bandwidth and now that they can't deliver, they're blaming the customer.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
???
How much is too much?
How would you handle the passenger texting then? The driver isn't the only one in the car.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
ATT offered users an unlimited data plan, no wait, they required one with an iPhone. Now the problems with ATT's network are the fault of those selfish users who took ATT's offer seriously. Give me a break. ATT is rolling in money from iPhone, they should use it to build out their network.
If there was any love from Apple for its users, they would dump the AT&T exclusive deal and allow the iPhone to be sold and supported on all the other networks out there. But since they get such a sweet kickback from AT&T, they have zero incentive.
Every iPhone user I talk to in the midwest says they would dump AT&T in a heartbeat for Verizon or US Cellular (if they would ever support SIM cards). Even more people who don't have an iPhone would get one if they didn't have to sign up with AT&T.
If you have a real smartphone, one with a wide variety of applications, one that everyone will WANT to use, you must have an unlimited data plan.
Rather, what AT&T and Apple need to do is "WiFi tunnels": Have the iPhone associate with WiFi networks and encrypt traffic through a tunnel opportunistically to AT&T, so you can use and migrate between WiFi networks transparently, and between the WiFi and 3G, while having the phone act like its just continuously connected through a single network.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Given that WiFi routers in urban areas with DSL backhaul can take a lot more data than 3G, maybe AT&T shouldnt consider their network as solely GSM-based.... and start getting iPhone and any other WiFi smartphone users to use wireless networks more..
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
And the money to expand this supply, which is now in the pockets of overpaid Apple, would have gone to the carriers. The traffic would have distributed because consumers would react to lower service levels and changed to other carriers, and when the system is balanced the pressure to expand and innovate is also balanced. Instead of, as in this case, creating a cartel in which both AT/T and iPhone deserves any shit thrown at them. And before anybody answers, NO this is not business, there are rules to business and if you cannot understand that then fuck off. Unfortunately I'm posting Anon due to the fucking Macibans infecting slashdot who mod down Apple criticism even when it's true.
As a great man [allegedly] once said, 640kb should be enough for anyone.
Modern users with their demands for eight, sixteen and thirty two megabyte options are just needlessly draining the world's silicon supply so they can listen to a few songs. Traditional phone users who don't have all of those cutesy multimedia options can get by with a fraction of that.
Alternatively, time moves on. Just because 640kb was once enough for anyone, doing what they did with the limitations of that era, just because 40-80mb/month was once enough for anyone... That doesn't mean time doesn't move on and it doesn't mean it's appropriate to only support what once was the norm.
AT&T have made a metric assload of money from people who bought the iPhone for, well, being an iPhone and not "some other" smartphone. AT&T's network sucks, just about everyone seems to gripe about it. They suck it up, when they'd never have gone with AT&T in the first place, because it does come with a more able phone, because it does come with unlimited data access, because it does come with an interface that makes using 5-10x as much bandwidth as before a practical reality.
To play bait and switch, to get users to buy $600 phones (yes, I'll claim full price in a world where you either pay inflated monthly rates or a fee to cancel), to get them to sign up for those contracts, to get them to leave companies with more reliable service, all with the promise of an unlimited phone and then to say... yeah, we don't feel like paying to support that so, instead, surprise! we're capping the unlimited service we sold you and charging overage fees is obscene.
If AT&T can't really roll out coverage to support iPhone users using an iPhone as an iPhone... perhaps the real answer is for Apple to say, "OK, you can't meet your end of the agreement - we'll sell it to Sprint/Verizon/whoever instead."
AT&T entered in to an agreement with Apple to provide a network that supported Apple's product. AT&T entered into an agreement with the customers to provide a network to support that product in a certain way, too. If they'd like to acknowledge they can't honor that, I'm sure another company would like the opportunity.
Consumers do not like tiered pricing, particularly those who purchase a smart phone for the purpose of fully using all it's fancy data consuming capabilities. The all you can eat plan, in this case, is a big selling point.
The main reason not to meter a limited resource is if the overall added cost minus benefit of metering exceeds the overall cost minus benefit of not metering.
That isn't the case with a congested spectrum.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I say ATT needs to improve their network or die. If they can't innovate and build a better network then someone else will step up to the plate. I don't feel sorry for them.
When android phones really start to become ubiquitous on other networks in 2010 those carriers will have to deal with the same issue, but I am willing to bet you that they won't suffer problems like ATT has, because they did things in the proper order, network first and then the phone. I think for ATT it is really about a misappropriation of money. Spend money wisely and invest in infrastructure, then roll out the smartphone.
ATT has had so many complaints with the iPhone that ATT is NOW being forced to invest in infrastructure, the problem is it is going to take a while for the benefits to show up. Hence, we get idiotic ideas like tiered pricing, because users are so upset about the state of the network they are willing to do anything to see service improve.
Go Illini!!!
AT&T is selling something they cannot deliver.
The problem: iPhone users suck up too much bandwidth for the ATT network. The solution: decrease use or increase network capacity.
For ATT, the decreased use can happen using updated pricing, and increased capacity will happen as a matter of course from year to year, but I think the real and likely solution ATT will just not like: when the contract is over and the iPhone is made available on other networks the ATT network will experience less use (lost customers) and iPhone users will experience greater capacity (they are spread out on multiple networks).
Most AT&T customers do not go anywhere near 100MB of data and are perfectly willing to pay a flat $40 monthly fee. By cutting their bill by $30 you have just thrown away $30 of AT&T's profits. You're only hope would be to recover that money by raising the prices on the high bandwidth users by the same amount or more. If anything, by restricting their bandwidth usage you'd actually be encouraging a saving behavior that by definition results in lower profits for you. You're also cutting the profits on your largest subscription base, all for a dubious increase in "goodwill". Maybe it would be a lot more cost effective to just build more towers.
Whenever I hear tiered pricing, I never imagine a $30 discount to the low level users. I see a $5 discount (in return for a 50% lower effective usage cap) to those guys and a $20 increase to everyone else.
They're going to need it as a competitive advantage. As more smart phones come out, they're going to have just as much impact on AT&T's network, and then everyone will be contributing to making the network slower.
If they don't upgrade, someone like Verizon is going to see it as a competitive weakness, and capitalize on it once they get their smartphones/iPhones (when the exclusivity contract runs out). The iPhone is just a harbinger of what's to come with mobile devices.
While I understand the benefits of applying an early adopter tax, it also makes AT&T vulnerable in a market that's pretty competitive already.
Reeses
I rarely use my iphone internet because the speeds suck and I live in an edge network. I would like to see an alternative to the $30 unlimited plan and instead have something like $10 X amount of time/data plan that roll overs unused data to the next month like roll over minutes.
Really, how could AT&T not have seen this coming? Having attempted to surf the web on other phones, on an iPhone, while it is not perfect, it is at least functional. And guess what? More people will surf the web when they get an iPhone. When AT&T promoted that phone, more users that will tax their infrastructure. Unless someone at AT&T was praying that people would get the iPhone and not use one of the most useful features about it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And ATT should upgrade their crap network, and all we need for that to happen is to have the media monopolies broken up and regulated.
Until a time comes when ATT has to compete to stay alive, you will have crap plans, crap contracts, and, of course, a crap network.
Leave it to an idiot like Manjoo to look for the worst solution...tiering.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I get only 450 f'ing voice minutes per month with that unlimited data plan, so AT&T and you, Farhood, can kiss my @$$
While the logic is sound, his basic premise is quite flawed. His article is based upon the idea that these "iPhone Users" are something so different and special from other phone users, that the world has never seen anything like them before (sounds like a bit of Apple propaganda to me). However, that is patently wrong. Just look at Japan. A very large percentage of the Japanese population uses their cell phones in ways that would put iPhone users to shame. That is not even mentioning that Japanese cities have much higher population densities than American cities, and you don't hear stories of how the Japanese phone network is falling apart. Between these two points, his conclusion that we will never be able to build enough network capacity to support iPhone users is clearly false.
Would this bandwidth disaster have happened if they hadn't simply embezzled those billions of tax dollars of government handouts they were given to prevent this happening in the first place?
I hope these scum go bankrupt after their network crashes and the iPhone cash cows jump ship. Same for every other ISP and telco in on the scam.
iPhone is just the most visible because it can be equipped with all sorts of apps that actually work as advertised most times, and people actually use them. If [fill-in-the-blank-other-carrier] supplied an equally useful product, their network would get hammered too.
Personally, I would say the topic of this article hasn't really affected me and I travel a lot. My iPhone on AT&T works at least as good as my previous Blackberry 8830 and Treo before that did on Verizon. The aircard for my laptops consistently works better than the Verizon one did. The only time I've seen crappy data rates is usually at/near an airport where a zillion other people are connecting to the same tower as me. Not too surprising and not worth the effort to whine about.
The writer builds his entire argument on the idea that, like highways, building network capacity produces a phenomenon called "induced traffic". The more roads you build, the traffic they attract, producing an unending(but not really) cycle of expansion and congestion.
Setting aside the obvious dissimilarities between network traffic and highway traffic, what he fails to mention is that there's an upper limit to induced because, as usual, there are a finite number of people and cars. If it really was the case that highways inevitably congested no matter how many you build, all of our highways - not just the ones outside of major metro areas during rush hour - would be chronically congested, at all times. But they aren't. This is because there is an upper limit on how much people drive no matter how many highways are available for them to use, and there is an upper limit on how many people drive to begin with.
Similarly, the Internet would have grinded to a halt long ago if building out capacity wasn't at least a partial solution, if not a complete solution, to the problem. Most broadband users have unlimited access as well, and while some tax the network disproportionately, the Internet's infrastructure is able to support it.
Why the author thinks the same principle doesn't apply to iPhones is beyond me. Yes, people will do more data-intensive things on a faster network. But there's an upper limit to how much data can be transferred by a single iPhone user in one month anyway, even if the user is transferring data 24/7, 7 days a week. if the network is built to handle the upper-limit of the most data-intensive users even in a hypothetical "induced traffic" scenario, this won't be a problem.
The whole traffic analogy belongs in the "The Ted Stevens Dumptruck of Bad Analogies," and Slate should stop publishing articles about shit it doesn't know about.
Oh great, /. doesn't know how to count so now my subject line sounds perverted.
ATT should charge more on overcrowded cell-sites and less on lightly loaded cell-sites. Also they should show the consumer what and where they are. This does two things, keeps sales up in areas where sales are low, and shows the users in the areas where insufficient network resources exist, how horrible the vendor is, or something. Oh well.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
source: http://www.companypay.com/executive/compensation/at-t-inc.asp?yr=2008
Total compensation of the five active execs listed for 2007 $59,359,833.00
Source: http://www.celltowerinfo.com/faq-4.htm
cost to build a tower $100,000 - $300,000
so I'll take 200k as an average
source: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=59359833%2F200000&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
number of towers that builds if they take NO PAY AT ALL- 296.799
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states_of_america
surface area of the US 3,794,066 sq mi
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_site
range of a cell tower gsm 25miles otherwise 30-45 miles..
lets say 40 miles-- be generous
source http://www.onlineconversion.com/shape_area_circle.htm
area of a circle using 45 as the radius= 6361 miles
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=6361%2F3794066&aq=f&oq=&aqi= .00167656546
6361 into the size of the USA
you've taken away 100% of their compensation, and added 1/10 of one percent of the towers needed to blanket the nation
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I'm sick of companies selling services they know they can't deliver and then just hoping that enough customers don't actually use what they paid for. Then they whine about it when it all comes crashing down. "Unlimited" means "Unlimited". If you can't deliver it, then don't sell it. Trying to reap the profits of selling "unlimited" while not paying the costs of delivering "unlimited" is just dishonest. Huh, "dishonest". Now there's a word you hardly ever hear applied to large corporations. /sarcasm. Just for the record, I don't own a smartphone.
that was given to ATT in th 90's for infrastructure upgrades? oh, right, i forgot. It was used to snort coke off of hookers tits and buy islands for the CEOs.
I wish people like you would keep your stupid suggestions to yourself. My iPhone works just fine and I could give 3 shits about its reliability because it is so useful to me - I live in Silicon Valley and sure sometimes there is no bandwidth when in a huge crowd of hipsters but I DONT CARE I like my phone and dont have any trouble accessing services. AT&T needs to upgrade their system - that is all. I Already pay $150 a month for this phone... I dont need an extra teir of pricing... in fact I believe the phone should cost me $80 bucks a month max with unlimited everything. That seems fair - not your suggestion.
Go kick rocks!
Dj fuQ [url="http://djfuq.org"]djfuq urges you to listen to the beats[/url] [url="http://djfuq.org"]http://djfuq.org[
This does not make sense. If the network cannot handle the load, improve the network would be the right call to make. Making users use the network is thinking backwards. What if the same solution was applied to all enterprise apps. Oh The performance of the app is suffering because too many users are using it at the same time. Lets charge the users who are using it, or ration the app out to different departments based of priority. Whaaaat? If AT&T wants to prove that it is not their network that is the problem, they shoulld let Verizon have a go at the iPhone and see if it crumbles their network too.
stop whining, and shut up GOT KIDDIES? go ride your bikes.
contribute at wikademia
I can agree to that, but my car has bluetooth built in. :)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
A company is selling an "unlimited" plan and can't handle unlimited usage? How dare you suggest such a thing. That is blasphemy against Capitalism at its highest. No company would ever stoop to such lengths as offering more than they can handle in the hope that people won't use it. That just wouldn't be proper, even if it did increase profit in the short-term.
Next thing I know you'll be telling me that all of those "unlimited" broadband connections aren't unlimited, and that my $2 per month "unlimited" hosting account won't really let me host unlimited files with unlimited bandwidth!
I'm all in favor of the iPhones having AT&T's network. I don't have an iPhone and won't be getting one, and my phone has already been bumped off with 'Network Congestion' way too many times in the past few months.
Since AT&T's taken on the iPhone, there has been no network upgrade/expansion in the area I live. My basic phone service is as tempermental and annoying now as it was 5 years ago when I moved into this place. Even the 'upgrade plan' map that the salesperson gave me the last time I changed up phones is identical to the one I was given 5 years ago--just with the years changed to reflect the passing of the years.
After being with AT&T for over 10 years, I'll be changing to a carrier that does provide service to my home when I need to change phones next. Nothing AT&T can say will change that...they've had their chance these past 5 years.
Some iPhone fans will argue that metered pricing would kill the magic of Apple's phone -- that sense of liberation one feels at being able to access the Internet from anywhere, at any time.
If being able to access the net is freedom then I rest my case for the destruction of the species.
Don't make me say this again.
iPhone is just the most visible because
It's the most visible because it's the only one that gets advertised by the media. I mean seriously - I used to joke about daily Iphone stories, but today we have, what, at least three on the front page? Where's the coverage for the big names like Nokia? Of course it's the most visible - but sales figures show a different story. And a good thing too, as I for one don't want the future of mobile computing to be a monopoly like we ended up with Microsoft, but worse one that's locked down to the extent that you can't even release an application without Apple approval.
Personally I'd much rather to see a future that continues with multiple companies (of which Apple can be one), with choice, and most importantly, compatible standards so that I can release an application that Just Works on all phones, without needing me to recompile it especially for each make, or getting corporate approval from the companies. I don't see why this is so controversial - and why Slashdot of all places is supporting the Iphone all the way.
Once upon a time, this was a place to support open and alternative solutions, not to give coverage and free advertising solely to large companies with locked down products!
Note that all phones can run so called "apps". Running applications on phones has been common on all but the most basic phones for at least 5 years, and note that the market of Java smartphones is estimated at two billion.
I'm not a hater. That's just another deceitful trick put out: that if someone uses another phone, disagrees that the Iphone is the best phone ever - or disputes claims that the Iphone is the best selling phone out there - they must be doing so out of an irrational hatred (e.g., the story about Japan hating Iphones).
By all means let's have a sensible debate about which phone is the best, or argue about how many phones are sold by which company. But please, let's have a fair debate, with evidence - rather than resorting to the usual tactic of branding people "haters", or modding people down out of sight simply because you disagree with them, and can't respond to their criticisms.
Or people texting while riding the bus or train?
You're ignoring population density- the vast vast majority of iphone users are urban. Blanket those 300ish towers in the op 20 metropolitan areas and your problem is 99% solved.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Increase capacity. Let's face it, this usage is only going to increase in the future. You can try limiting it now, but that is a short-term solution. Increase capacity and reap the benefits later.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
AT&T should build more network capacity.
Of course, they aren't getting any money for this increased capacity, but it would make lots of existing customers feel better. Happier. Happy customers mean ... well, happy customers, right? That would be a good thing.
Of course, it might mean that AT&T Wireless just pulls the plug because their wireless costs far exceed their revenue. Sad, really sad. Not so happy customers. But it was great while it lasted.
I guess the lesson is that all good things comes to an end. Maybe someone else will come along and provide unlimited wireless pretty much for free. I mean, how much can it really cost, anyway?
Maybe the government should just make sure that everyone has free wireless, you know like the "right to have wireless" or something. It would be really great. Well, maybe not for AT&T, but great for the rest of us.
You wouldn't think that AT&T is driving themselves into the ground by having (a) limited capacity and (b) selling unlimited access would you?
I guess we can all hope for free government-mandated wireless now. Since Bush is gone it could probably get passed.
Your math is totally off.
3,794,066 sq mi / (6361 sq mi / tower) = 596 towers
596 towers * 200,000 $/tower = $119,200,000
So the top five would have to go without pay for two years in order to theoretically blanket the US. Of course, since the coverage of a tower is roughly circular, and circles don't tesselate, you'd actually need a lot more than 600 towers. However, for the pay of the top five execs, you could build about 300 towers.
my old ISP comcast, while saying nothing overtly, would cut off people that exceeded some very high transfer limit. i think it was 100GB / mo. while i am not sure on the exact limit, the idea is probably a good one ... don't let 0.01% of your users kill the experience of the other 99.99%.
at&t can have something similar. that data plan, while still technically unlimited, can include stipulations in the contract to cut off the 0.01% of users that are streaming CD quality audio 24 hours day. for users that for some reason need that bandwidth, offer a "business" data plan at a higher rate.
the problem is how to "cut off" those people. there'd probably be a lawsuit if the data service was just turned off. if you silently start charging a higher rate, there's going to be the story of the one person who got a $5k phone bill which will scare many users away from at&t+iphone.
Mods, mod this AC up. GP forgot to include the number of towers into the calculation (300); that brings his 0.17% up to about 50%.
I don't know if iPhone users really cause anything to run slower, or if this is just a myth put out to shift blame. My iPhone runs plenty fast over the cell network. What I do now that iPhones users pay for the bandwidth.
If a change is to made, then it needs to be made simpler. Realize that the iPhone may not be used as a phone, and therefore selling a voice plan as the basis may serve the customer. Or combine voice and data. One MB and one minute are perhaps the same thing. Sell 1000 units at the same cost as the basic package now. Get rid of charging for texting. I bet more people would text and not email if texting were cheaper.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
you've taken away 100% of their compensation, and added 1/10 of one percent of the towers needed to blanket the nation
Data-induced congestion occurs only where there's already coverage, and where smartphone users live. So carpeting the entire nation is not necessary. If that's your goal, your calculation is seriously off anyway because you need to deal with the backhaul issue.
Why not upgrade the infrastructure to support the usage they have been advertising and people have been using?
Simply ridiculous.
"People are using the phone in a manner consistent with how we told them they could use it! Upgrade the network to meet our promises? Wrong. Change the pricing structure. This problem is clearly the consumers fault."
I think the real solution here is to end phone exclusivity entirely. At the moment, all AT&T has to do to attract customers is to simply be selling the iPhone. There is no incentive for them to do anything else. If phone exclusivity were to end (I'm talking about ALL phones, not just the iPhone) then carriers would be forced to compete based on their *gasp* service rather than the devices they've paid enormous amounts of money to have exclusive (and of course pass those costs onto us). Of course this is never going to happen but it would be beneficial to everyone involved.
I personally have never had any trouble with AT&T's network though I've heard lots of horror stories in more populous areas like New York City or LA. At the moment I'm still using an original RAZR since no cell phone manufacturer seems to want to make a good smartphone for AT&T seemingly because they'd have to compete with the iPhone.
Back in the old days of dialup my provider offered an unlimited plan. Here is how it worked.
At the start of the month everyone started off with the same traffic priority. For the sake of argument, lets call that number 1.0
As you used more bandwidth your traffic priority dropped proportionately to other users on the system.
Those who used less bandwidth got higher priority when they did decide to use the system. Those who used more got bumped aside on the network.
Why not do this here?
People need to think bigger. Much bigger.
Wireless spectrum is given out to the major wireless carriers so that they can individually implement their own technology and let the market sort it out what is best. It doesn't work. All the available technologies are adequate. It's time for a major overhaul in the structure of our wireless industry. Having multiple networks cover the entire country, a sizable region, with towers for CDMA and GSM towers is inefficient and partially responsible for the outrageous rates we all pay for wireless service.
Here's my plan for a radically more efficient, cheaper wireless industry:
1. Feds seize wireless spectrum for GSM and CDMA.
2. FCC mandates all wireless carriers switch to GSM.
2. Congress mandates all wireless telephone carriers in the US establish peering contracts, whereby there is no such thing as roaming anymore.
3. Feds establish rate limits for services. Data access would not be unlimited, but rates should be limited to $.05 per megabyte. Voice access rates should be capped to $15 per 1000 minutes per line.
The effect here is that networks aren't chasing each others tails to have the biggest networks or the best coverage. You never know whose network you're really using. This allows wireless networks to have a joint stake in the overall network access quality as well as any new towers will provide coverage for all GSM phone users, not just a subset of people.
Wireless carriers will still have the ability to use contracts for subsidizing phone purchases, which locks a person into service with that carrier for a period of time. With that, carriers will still have a lot of opportunity to provide profit bearing value-add services beyond the rate caps established by the FCC. This would also place the smallest wireless carriers on equal footing with the largest carriers with respect to access to the newest handset models.
Moving the entire country to GSM over a period of 2 years is quite feasible, since that's the average handset upgrade cycle for Americans. This is just one possible way to radically change the way the wireless industry works and remove the huge inefficiencies in the way the capital investment is spent.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
You're ignoring the fact that the dense urban centers are already covered. And no, two cell towers in the same spot don't give you twice the bandwidth.
They're called "cell" towers for a reason...
Eh... the 1/10 of 1 percent figure applies only to one tower. Your guesstimate has the number of towers being almost 300. So actually, 0.167656546 % coverage per tower (we're not counting for the inevitable overlap between towers) * 296 towers = 49.6263 % - almost half of the nation. We're also ignoring the already existing towers, of course, but these would be a welcome supplement in any case.
However, suppose we were to assume a 25 mile radius, instead...given that 40/45 seems optimistic, as you noted. 1,963.49541 sq. miles, divided into America's size would give us 1,932.3 towers needed to blanket the nation, at 0.0005% coverage per tower, ignoring overlap and ignoring existing towers. Of which, the executive contribution would cover 15.360% of the nation.
-- Joren
As someone who has worked for a city planning agency for many years, I can attest that your tower costs are merely the cost of the material inputs. The cost of putting up a new tower in a residential or commercial area that has already been developed is perhaps 20x that due to the amount of red tape involved and billable hours for attorneys, expert witnesses, and more.
-THE END-
If only they invest. If they just invest to provide sufficient data streams for their clients, they will have a next generations'network, with the clients, while the competition is still nowhere. You can't milk a cow with your hands in your pants.
However, suppose we were to assume a 25 mile radius, instead...given that 40/45 seems optimistic, as you noted. 1,963.49541 sq. miles, divided into America's size would give us 1,932.3 towers needed to blanket the nation, at 0.0005% coverage per tower, ignoring overlap and ignoring existing towers. Of which, the executive contribution would cover 15.360% of the nation.
gahhhh it's 0.05% coverage per tower, not 0.0005%. Got mixed up between percent and decimal...these errors are infectious!
-- Joren
Actually the square created inside of the circle is what matters, making each tower, at best, able to cover a grid square of 625-4050 square miles.
http://www.demographia.com/db-uland2000.htm
then we have not to cover ALL of the US for some reasonable amount of coverage but, instead, the urbanized land where we actually need the towers: 92,505
At $300,000 (the highest possible cost) a 25mi tower(the lowest possible range) it would cost ATT about 44million to double the coverage in urban portions of the US.
It is important to not that by only paying the top executives at ATT an average of 3.2 million each ATT could double coverage every year.
As a Brit now living in the USA, it continually amazes me how Americans 'understand' or even even agree with corporations consistently crappy service (20 minutes on hold anyone?) even when they aren't getting what they clearly paid for up front.
Yet more costs to customers? No! The blame lies with AT&T. The proper solution is for AT&T to spend some of their massive profits gained from iPhone sales and contracts on better infrastructure and provide what they already promised as a part of the contract.
That /would/ be the Apple way, just like OS X on laptop. "Latch on opportunistically to any Wifi network in range, regardless of any authorization to be using it or not". Sounds like a plan - instead of you and AT&T figuring out a solution to the "problem", the rest of us can just subsidize it for you. Yay us!
The concept of "unlimited" plans is obviously a fiction, but there are problems presented by selling customers a fixed monthly data allotment because people who download at off peak hours will unfairly pay as much as someone who downloads during peak hours, and regardless of the time of day someone who downloads from a cell site with a huge excess of capacity will be penalized just as much as someone who downloads from a cell site that is breaking under overwhelming demand.
The best solution is for the cell phone companies to sell customers 'shares' of bandwidth. It would work something like this:
With your cell phone plan you own one 'share' of bandwidth and you are allowed to download 10 Gb/month of peak demand data. You have an unlimited monthly allotment of non-peak data that you can download.
Say that the cell phone company defines 'peak' data usage as anytime an individual customer for an individual cell site is unable to download at a rate of at least one Mbps.
Now say a given cell site has a capacity of 10 Mbps. If two different customers are accessing this site simultaneously (each has one share) then each one will be able to download at a rate of 5 Mbps. This cell site obviously has a lot of excess capacity - neither of these two users will have eaten into their 10 Gb/month data allotment.
Now say that the same cell site has twenty users - each user's share will come out to 0.5 Mbps of bandwidth. The data that is being downloaded will be deducted from their 10 Gb/month allowance because the available bandwidth per share is now less than one Mbps.
What happens when a user exceeds their monthly allotment? They get throttled down to... well let's say 0.5 shares. Now when they download they will only get 0.25 Mbps at the same time that other users are getting 0.5 Mbps from the same site.
Users who want more capacity can purchase more shares from the wireless provider.
The cell sites should give real-time feedback to the smartphones when the cell site is operating at peak capacity and deducting from their 10 Gb/month limit.
The FCC will need to put out some rules to prevent the usual predictable abusive wireless provider behavior. We don't want AT&T to suddenly charge you one dollar per Mb that you use in excess of the 10 Gb/month limit. In my view it is criminal when companies generate revenue via 'gotchas' instead of honest practices.
We pay by the unit for almost every thing, I've never understood why people think bandwidth should be different. It's a scarce resource, particularly at certain times of day. We pay more for heating fuels in the winter, we pay by the unit and by time of day for electricity, why not bandwidth?
The problem is that when companies like AT&T engage in tiered pricing, they typically try to price-discriminate, i.e., they charge more per unit to those who value the service more highly. This is why we get ridiculous charges for text messages and using data in Canada gets you hit with absurd prices per megabyte. This obnoxious behavior is why everyone reflexively tenses up when tiered pricing is raised. But it doesn't have to be like that. The price could be very low, and could vary by time of day, but could scale without limit. And if it were really a fair price, I think folks would be okay with that. And if we're going to have per unit pricing, the software should permit easy overnight downloads at a reduced rate (just like running your dishwasher at 3am to get a reduced electricity rate).
However
I've had an iphone 3G since launch, I stream radio every day, I browse, have push exchange email, use a ton of data apps, even used PC tethering in a pinch, and I have never gone over 300MB/mo. I have a 6 GB/mo plan, so there's no reason for me to skimp. I just simply cannot break 300MB/mo no matter how much I use it.
How in the hell is everyone else going over 400MB/mo?
I thought Apple dictated unlimited data plans (and visual voicemail) in exchange for the exclusivity agreement with AT&T?
In Canada, it took over a year for Apple and Rogers to agree to terms. The rumored sticking point was again, the data plan. When the iPhone came here, the data plan was a fraction of the cost of existing data plans - even though, it's not unlimited.
Oh great, /. doesn't know how to count so now my subject line sounds perverted.
stop whining like a spoilt bra
The rate at which demand is increasing will far outpace any attempt at building infrastructure to keep up. It's that simple.
A simple solution is to rely on old fashioned supply and demand. Demand is huge and the supply is limited. Use all you want, you just have to pony up for it. It's fair for everybody. Maybe ATT could lower the price for customers who don't use a ton of bandwidth.
I'm not an advocate of the capitalism-can-solve-everything view but in this case it seems straight forward.
I don't understand why everyone is against metered data costs whether it be on phones or one their home connections. Electricity and other utilities are metered by use and it doesn't seem to provoke the outrage that metering of data connections does. Adding metered data usage could make the iPhone data plan cheaper for light users. The concept of metered usage is not inherently any less fair than unlimited usage plans, it all depends on what price structure they propose. If unlimited data is $30 but 1Gb/month is $15 then the average iPhone user is saving money, on the other hand if instead the pricing was $1/Mb obviously the users would be losing. It's clearly too early to be worried, why don't you wait and see what happens? Why shouldn't the people who use a little data on their iPhone pay less than the people who use a lot?
You should write to your congressman, if you are a American at least. You have a great plan, which would take care of most of the problems. Only problem I can see is that if the Gov owns the wireless network, then they are less likely to upgrade it in a timely manner. Maintenance would be done well, but the upgrades wouldn't be as important.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The only good solution to the problem of network billing is per-byte (or per-kilobyte) billing with a reasonable rate, and maybe a small monthly 'connectivity fee'. Any other solution is unfair to customers, and sets up a wrong reward structure for the company. With unlimited plans, the company is rewarded for having less available bandwidth, because the revenue per customer stays the same while costs are roughly proportional to available bandwidth. With metered plans, the amount of money that can be made is proportional to available bandwidth, so it is in the interest of the company to invest in infrastructure.
Unfortunately this is also the solution that doesn't have any loopholes to not provide the service that was paid for, which is what US telecoms want.
I don't really know why people want unlimited plans. A metered plan with a reasonable rate can be much cheaper, and does not bring the risk of being disconnected, because the more bandwidth you use the more incentive the company has to keep you aboard.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Why should building a tower cost as much as a house? Even 100k seems way inflated for a pole with some repeaters on it.
What so many people seem to be completely ignoring is the fact that AT&T is focused on the NEXT generation of networks... the "4G" if you will.
I attended an AT&T sponsored "lunch and learn" session on "The future of wireless", several months back. (I got a free invite from our AT&T business sales rep. at my work. It included a free lunch at a nice hotel, and it's not often AT&T gives you ANYTHING free, so I figured "What the heck?" and went.)
They made it abundantly clear at this session that AT&T sees "smartphones" as the future of their business. The speaker even made a point of emphasizing that they feel the idea of a "telephone" is outdated. The future they see is everyone carrying around pocket computers, essentially, which do happen to allow making/taking voice calls, but will be used just as much, if not more, for data-related purposes.
They went on to say that they were pretty much getting behind the iPhone as *the* premiere device for this future, with the Blackberry being supported strongly as well, as the "alternate". They felt that a large display screen was an essential component to making all of this work, and right now, the iPhone is the only "smartphone" in widespread use with a big enough screen. The Blackberry, by contrast, they felt was a big player for other reasons. (Some people prefer having a real keyboard, if they're going to do a lot of data entry from their device, and the Blackberry has obvious advantages right now from corporate standpoints, where secure communications takes precedence over all else.)
AT&T has some interest in expanding into selling software and services related to all of this. (They mentioned a partnership, for example, with a company that makes development software that allows someone to code an app once, and have it support many different smartphone devices, without the developer having to concern him/herself with details of the screen resolutions and input limitations of each specific device. They also wanted to move into the space of selling tools to companies, to enable the remote use of their internal databases from mobile devices.)
Although it was more implied than stated, I came away with a pretty strong "hint" that AT&T really doesn't want to spend TOO much on improving their admittedly sub-standard 3G data network, because they feel the future is with migrating people to the next generation of data networks instead. They have goals of rolling it out by some time in 2011, at least for trial use and testing. If they make any moves like eliminating "unlimited" plans for iPhones to get more revenue, you can bet the extra profits WON'T improve your 3G performance. They'd simply funnel that into future R&D and rolling out of the new network (which won't even be compatible with the current crop of iPhones anyway). Any improvements you'd see would ONLY be from people leaving AT&T for other networks, or people reducing their usage of their iPhones to try to save money.
Oh, and for what it's worth, another "key point" they made (in response to a question from someone in attendance) was that AT&T still feels the "bread and butter" of the Internet should/will reside on land based connections. At the end of the day, they don't think much of the idea of everything "going wireless" to the point where T1 circuits and such cease to exist. They view the "wireless cellular network" as never being more than a "bridge" back to a wired network someplace nearby. (I happen to largely agree with them here, and think that's probably "common sense". Yet others would say that just reflects AT&T's long-standing mentality and interest in copper wires and land-lines ... and that they're incapable of "thinking far enough outside the box". Some might envision high-speed wireless comprised of everything from satellite to wi-fi repeaters placed all over as a future that would take the whole Internet into the wireless realm....)
It's already getting there with the rollout of LTE on most of the major US networks.
And you are ignoring the vast numbers of pirates who need coverage in the middle of the Pacific, matey.
3. Feds establish rate limits for services. Data access would not be unlimited, but rates should be limited to $.05 per megabyte. Voice access rates should be capped to $15 per 1000 minutes per line.
Data is not a commodity, data is a service
When I go and buy a jar of salsa, the manufacturer had to pay a specific amount of $ to manufacture that specific jar. If I do not buy it, he can keep it around and sell that jar to someone else tomorrow.
When I want to park in a parking space for an hour, however, the city does not have to pay someone $ to create an hour in which I could park. If I do not park there, then the city cannot keep around the hour I was going to buy and sell it to someone else.
In fact, if the city had magical parking meters that would safetly and immediately eject the car of any non-paying person immediately as soon as someone with a quarter wanted to park, the city could just let non-payers park there as much as they wanted, with the understanding their car might not be at the same location when they got back.
The city would be foolish not to do this, as the parking meter is just there to make sure that someone going to the store on that street (say, to buy a jar of salsa) can find someplace to park. While magical parking meters don't exist, this IS how bandwidth works on the internet.
Unless your ISP is a drooling moron, they are NOT paying per-kb, per-mb, or any real per-use fee at all. They signed an agreement with backbone providers to get a certain amount of bandwidth for a certain amount of time, and they don't pay any more for bandwidth on an hour when NO ONE uses their network than they do for the busiest hour of their year.
If AT&T really wants to keep bandwidth responsive, they want to decrease the effect that heavy users have on their network. The cheap way is to just lie and charge those heavy users more -- but that's not the right way. The right way would be to set a self-tiering structure, where so much network activity over so long just puts a heavy user's requests at a lower priority than the lighter user who pays the same amount.
Letting heavy users voluntarily pay more to get faster service would be a great revenue model, too. Especially since it wouldn't be in danger of the FCC declaring it unlawful.
Granted I live in the Minneapolis area, not Silicon Valley or midtown Manhattan. But overbuilt cities with inadequate infrastructure have many congestion issues, why should this be any different?
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
Yes, seize it all and regulate it even more. This will be the key to our salvation.
/sarcasm
On the real though, they should get rid of the assignation of wireless spectrum and allow a truly free market for wireless voice and data service to grow. It's not that hard to make sure one's service doesn't interfere with the next. Rather than giving out monopolies over spectrum let the courts handle disputes where one company is directly interfering with another's.
ummmm...i like my CDMA rev A devices.... you can buy my new 800$ phone.
Doesn't make it any safer, the problem is the conversation with someone you can't see.
Our brains are geared to use visual clues in conversation and when you can't see the other person the brain over focuses on the audio clues and starts down filtering anything not related to the conversation.
If anything hands free makes it worse, because you THINK your being safer and not putting any extra effort into your driving.
On the phone OR on the road, not both.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Yes this may force people who can't pay off the network and solve the congestion problem for those who can, but I don't think anyone wants that, except for maybe ATT, so they can improve their profits. A much better solution is to invest in infrastructure and keep the pressure up on the FCC to release more spectrum for mobile devices. In the short term, service will suffer, but for consumers it will be the best long term solution. Innovation is the solution, not pricing people out of the market.
Go Illini!!!
Have you EVER done anything related to cell site design? 40 mile RADIUS? That wiki states the LIMIT as 25 miles for GSM. In case you've never driving along a highway, there are towers a lot closer than every 50 miles. Wonder what the reason for that is? Oh, maybe it's because the radius of each cell site ISN'T 25 miles.
Let's try this. The signal being transmitted by the cell site, regardless of carrier or technology, travels at a certain frequency. When this signal hits any obstruction (yes, even air counts) it gets degraded and weakened by a certain amount. Buildings, trees, and ground are the main sources of signal degregation. If your tower is in a valley, you ain't getting signal from that tower on the other side of the mountain. The sad reality is that almost every tower is too low (either the height of the tower or it's ground elevation) to provide a 25 mile radius of coverage. Some mountain towers or towers along large bodies of water (Great Lakes for example) can get substantial line-of-site distances where calls can be made at 25 miles or more. So to assume that you can build towers to cover 6000+ square miles is absurd. Do the calculation assuming a radius of about 2 miles (most towers on highways in New England are spaced about 2-4 miles apart) and see how many towers you need to blanket the US. You could even go with a radius of 5 miles, because your towers in the Great Plains and other flat areas will get much greater radius of coverage and mountainous regious would have much smaller radius towers.
Either way, you can't have a valid calculation with an asinine assumption like each tower can cover 25 (or 40) miles in every direction. Nice try, though.
Sprint has the Pre and Hero and it's damn near impossible to spend more than $70/mo. That gets you unlimited mobile calls, data, text, gps, tv. The only way to spend more is if you spend more than 450 minutes a month calling landlines before 7pm. AT&T's base iPhone plan is $70 with no texts, favorite numbers, or gps, and the free nights start at 9pm.
You left out the retired execs who are still drawing a more than substantial compensation. Edward E. Whitacre, Jr alone got 78 million in one year.
Presumably they would build less in death valley, rural Alaska, etc. vast areas of the country have a population near zero and so aren't straining anything with massive data transfer.
Presumably they could start with the much smaller urban areas that are actually being overloaded. Note that the compensation is annual, so it would contribute year after year.
Don't forget to add in the billions in grants from Uncle Sam.
Good Lord man! Next thing, they'll start doing the same with hotel rooms and seats on planes. What's the world coming to?
In the terms, write "If you exceed SOME_NUMBER of transfer, your connection will be restricted for SOME_PERIOD."
That's all it takes, tell people up front that mega-consumers will be limited and given that caveat, they can decide if the service is fairly priced.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You mean there isn't something magic about the distance from the phone to your head? I just assumed, with all the laws, that your brain stopped working when your elbow bent past a certain degree.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
...is that 400MB per month is considered "heavy". We occasionally exceed 400GB on the wired connection at home, without running torrents/worms/bots/etc.
Are the wireless networks really so wimpy, or has the bandwidth just been massively oversold? OK, maybe it's both, and illustrates that wireless is not ready for prime time, as was mentioned here recently (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/08/2243242/FCC-Chairman-Warns-of-Wireless-Spectrum-Gap).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Since 9/15/2008:
Sent: 226 MB
Received: 2.1 GB
I'm usually on WiFi when I'm at home which is probably where I do most of my usage. The people that are on 400 MB per month probably don't have WiFi where they use it most often.
I'm a big tall mofo.
So I only need smartphone coverage where the majority of smartphones reside?
In that case, I guess AT&T's 3G coverage map doesn't look that bad after all... (grin)
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
...on the future. This future is the fully connected device, whether it be a smartphone, netbook or something completely different. Now I'm not saying that all data will live in the cloud like many vendors do, but enough will that an always connected device will pretty much be a requirement. And these carriers are all very quick to sell high end packages and lock customers into long term contracts. They also want to partner with manufacturers and offer devices and services to sell even larger packages. Unfortunately, I think they are unable to understand data use trends and still think of mobile devices as having the functionality of the cell phones of the 90's.
Now I understand that AT&T may not have been able to guess at the popularity of the iPhone and how it would be used when they signed the original contract with Apple, but if I was a wireless carrier, I'd much rather have the problem of too much usage on my network than not enough (think Sprint).
My advice to AT&T: Get to work! And remember that if you are going to build out your network, don't build it for tomorrow, build it for the next decade.
If repairing the roof in my house gets too expensive, I just might follow your line of reasoning and move back into a cave.
Seriously, if the iPhone is causing so many problems with AT&Ts congested network - Apple needs to start offering it through T-Mobile, Verizon, etc. Share the network pain, er, load.
Of course I know a lot of iPhone users will then jump ship from AT&T - but the overall iPhone experience will improve (well, I won't assume that for Verizon customers, given what that company does to its phones' functionality), and I'd think that'd be Apple's primary goal. Plus the remaining AT&T iPhone customers will have a better experience.
#DeleteChrome
I pay ATT each month for a data plan. I do not use anywhere near what I pay for. Most of us do not, so we are subsidizing iPhone users.
I have considered dumping the plan, but the few times a month I use it, I need it.
I would be more than willing to sign up for a pay as you go plan, especially since I would likely be in the lowest usage tier. Let the heavy users pay the heavy freight.
Pay as you go is far more fair than the socialist model used now, where the greedy get a free ride on the backs of others.
So I only need smartphone coverage where the majority of smartphones reside?
I thought the whole point of the discussion was about congestion, not about providing clean pipes to those who already enjoy clean air?
Everything the FCC touches is inflated. The actual cost of a radio, in active parts, that is stable and doesn't produce spurious output and interference: In the hundreds of dollars. Antenna, less. It's just folded and formed metal, very few active components, if any. Sturdy tower, 2-5 thousand, including a stable concrete base and mount. How do we know? Because ham radio operators put up very similar gear all the time. On many frequencies, some similar, some not, using many modes of transmission, again, some similar, some not.
Cost of "FCC type-approved" transmit equipment: In the tens of thousands. To which, as someone else pointed out, you have to add the cost of lawyers, licenses, land, VERY expensive type-approved towers, surveys, antennae, inspections, the hiring of FCC-approved engineers... it goes on and on. The benefit of all these extra processes? Basically zero. Well, other than lining the pockets of lawyers and vendors of type approved equipment, of course.
This is the cost of handing the government control of the spectrum. They make using it many times more expensive than it needs to be. The same thing they do to everything else. Why? Because they have absolutely no motive to bring down costs or make a profit, and if they fail to serve the people's needs, the people have no recourse -- we don't have any control over the FCC or any other embedded government operation.
For instance, you want to put a 100 watt FM broadcast station up at your house? It can be done for well under $500. You want to do it with FCC approval? Maybe, just maybe, you could do it for $50,000.00. But I doubt it. The difference in reliability, signal purity, stability, transmit coverage and quality because of cost alone? Zero.
The FCC's job here should be limited to coming out to the site before it's powered up, being there when that happens, taking a look at the output spectrum, taking a ride around to measure the coverage, measuring the tower/antennae assembly height to ensure it isn't in the way of the local aircraft patterns, if any, and handing over a signed operating license. For the cost of about half a day's pay for the inspector. The rest should be none of their business.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Seriously. Why should the customer (who is already paying out the ass already) have to suffer and pay more money?
Why isn't the solution for AT&T to improve their network?
(and honestly, it's not that bad, especially with a 3GS), it's only on occasion if you are in small extremely dense areas ....I live in Philly, and when the Phillies won the world series last year there was a parade. The entire city was on Broad st - that is one of the only times where there was a major problem - and that seemed to occur with other networks too....Other than that there have been times in small densely populated areas on Saturday nights where the web is slow or there are issues, but it's gotten a lot better.
If AT&T did what the author is suggesting then I would expect most of the customers who have purchsed Iphones exactly BECAUSE you can go online anytime to feel screwed...and screwing people who make you so much money, especially people who are very comfortable using the social features of the web..that's a bad idea.
Also, we're talking about mobile web usage, NOT people downloading binaires from newsgroups or torrents - the most demanding use is probably from people streaming music for pandora or streaming videos from youtube....Having a network support this and doing what AT&T needs to do to support the products they've sold and make SO much money off of monthly is the solution, it's the right solution, and it's the only real solution....So as I said, this guy can STFU.
Nah, that won't do the trick. Corporate farms cover thousands of acres; you can be sure that pressure will be exerted--at a golf course or strip club--to put a significant number of those 300ish towers in places that will ensure that if a combine operator needs to be reached, s/he can be, even on an iPhone.
Everything's a subsidy for those guys!
The CB App. What's your 20?
"Yes, seize it all and regulate it even more. This will be the key to our salvation. " - go ahead and tell me how well "the free market" is working to fix this problem.
Look, I'm all for consumer fairness. It would be nice to get better prices. But the fact is, whether you have a 5GB plan or an iPhone unspecified/unlimited plan, your averages are still well within the range of limits experienced by both parties. It hardly makes a difference.
The article is basically making the argument that somehow iPhone users should be punished because they're actually using the service AT&T has been selling everyone for a long time. This is pretty asinine. The real issue here is entirely different and entirely AT&T's prerogative. Let me enlighten you:
AT&T's "3G" network, which is actually 3.5G, HSPA... is on the tail end of its lifespan. The technology in all of these handsets depends on it, of course, but it's done. It's over. There is only one last stage of improvement to GSM tech and it's a stretch as it is. Why would AT&T want to invest in expansion of a dead infrastructure? They don't. They aren't going to any more than they have to. They will expand to the last stage of 3G in the largest markets just as they prepare to roll out the same LTE based networks that every other carrier is supporting.
That said, there's no reason to think bandwidth consumption is the primary concern here. The primary concern is one of density. The number of users each relying on the same cell is too great. It's not a matter of how much data they are transferring on that cell so much as that there must be more cells, or cells must be able to handle more concurrent users. That's just a factor of the proliferation of cellular phones and devices. You can't blame the iPhone for this. It's a problem that would occur eventually anyway as the trend towards data enabled devices existed before anyone even knew about the iPhone. Maybe the iPhone accelerated it, but that is no reason to punish people who like a good user experience.
Of course, there's another concern not addressed and that is the exact same concern that effects cable internet subscribers. Cable internet actually works in a very similar fashion to cellular internet. In the case of cable modems, customers share a download node that has a set maximum bandwidth with its uplink. You are sold rates like 12mbps but there is only a maximum of 60mbps at each node. So if more than 5 people all try to use 12mbps at once you won't get what is promised. However, because most people don't use nearly the maximum pretty much.... ever... the cable companies overprovision the network. They get away with it because the statistics generally match up. However, if you're unlucky enough to live in a neighborhood full of download happy geeks, you're going to hate your internet connection.
The same issue exists in cell towers. A give GSM cell can handle a fixed maximum number of communication slots each functioning as a statically wide band of communication. When a device ramps up from basic voice to data, to higher speed data, it will consume more slots. Or it won't, if there are none available and it will just stay slow or not connect to data, or whatever. So basically if you have 1000 slots on a given tower, and full 7.2mbps hsdpa+ requires 12 of those slots, you can see that there's a fixed number of people who can possibly access the network at full speed. Add to this the already common problem of the actual backing internet connection experiencing the exact same kind of limitation and you can see that infrastructure is a problem of density, not of actual transfer totals.
So, the lesson here is that more uplinks are needed so that uplinks are not as central a point of failure as they are today. What you'll earn is that cells are relatively evenly distributed across all markets but not all markets have an evenly distributed level of usage from consumers. People in metro areas will note the worst performance because there's simply too many people in one place. You'll note the epic failure of networks during large technical conventions with a 1000+ simultaneous attempts at liveblogging the latest
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Your math is good, but your thinking is flawed. They don't need to blanket the entire US. They need to cover areas where most of the people live, which they have already done. What they need to improve is the capacity of those coverage areas. (Adding a few towers here and there to improve signal strength wouldn't be a bad idea either.)
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
So you make the cells SMALLER. Who ever said you need to add new towers in the exact same place as an existing one.
Add 4 cell phone towers around an existing one, some distance away, and lower the power output appropriately. Now you've got 5 times the bandwidth in roughly the same area.
You pay a price that equals an amount of money that you are allowed to spend anyway you want.. Be that voice, texts or data.
Like almost all carriers here in Sweden do.
Tiered plans, and the price you pay, is the money you get to use.
Anything above that price, you pay metered.
Paying 20$ a month and used 25$? then you get those last 5$ separate on your bill.
It really is that simple, instead of all this crazy talk you guys spout about plans consisting of voice minutes and texts and data..
But then again.. I would never ever get myself a subscription.. I'm happy with my prepaid card, I have complete control over how much I wish to spend each month.
Lemme give you some examples.
The unlimited plan for one company: 100$ (and they've recently raised the cost from ~85$, to make it an actual unlimited plan, instead of just being a price roof of ~855$, since the use of smart phones is rising)
the cheapest one: ~14$
Now, if you were to buy an Iphone through this company, then you'd pay a minimum of ~42$, but instead you'd -always- get unlimited data, so that money only goes towards voice and texts.
PS. No they have no problems what so ever with over congested networks.
And I know this from the fact that I'm working for them.
You know, tiered pricing seems fair enough given the realities of wireless technology, but any tiered system has a top tier, and that really, desperately, needs to be unlimited.
I love this backwards idea, it will bring ATT one step closer to finally losing it's market dominance and allowing people to actually choose which company they use to carry their voice and data.
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From personal experience, I've seen none of these problems in the UK. Granted, our peak population density is about half that of big cities in the US (New York vs. London), but our national population density is an order of magnitude greater (1000 sq/mi (england) vs around 80 (USA) - or 650 sq/mi (UK) vs 80 (US)).
Seems to me that AT&T's network is just a bit crap. We have a bit more experience of running GSM networks over here!
Having said all that, O2 have had some spectacular cock ups on their data network recently, although not related to coverage/dropped calls.
And you really think that Verizon will give up the advantage it has right now so that the smaller players are on an even playing field? I don't think so.
No, eventually this will sort itself out, the cell system in still a young industry ( 20 years) and is rapidly becoming the primary phone for most people. Let competition keep going and see where it leads. Where I live, AT&T has decent coverage and so they need to concentrate their improvements in more crowded urban areas.
They (ATT) need to work toward unlimited calling as well as data, IMO. It seems silly to limit calls and practically give away the data stream.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Sorry, I can't agree. When conversing with a passenger, I don't turn my head from the road to watch their face, and I think that's true of most of us. Hands free works fine for me without impairing my driving. But it's a matter of priorities, the driving has to come first and if I'm in a tricky part of town (road construction, stop and go traffic, etc.) I'll often tell the person I'm speaking to that I have to go and they'll understand.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Which would be just fine if the problem was handling your phone while driving, but it has been proved that the issue is NOT handling the phone, it is the divided attention needed to talk and still herd your car along safely, and most folks DON'T have the needed mental faculties necessary. Note: I am not implying you are one of those people, many can safely perform 2 tasks or properly proritize themselves to give the most important one the needed timeslice.
I was on the phone with a CE from HP and the last thing I heard was OH SHIT...click. He rear-ended a stopped car at somthing approaching 30 MPH, while trying to pass on information I TOLD HIM could wait until he arrived on-site. Luckily he was not too seriously hurt, nor was the driver of the car he plowed into, but for me that was lesson learned, I can only hope it was the same for the CE. As for AT&T, they are getting what they deserve, oversell your network by 100 times and then suddenly discover you can't support the load, GIVE BACK some of the money you took from customers and agree to a plan based in reality. That is NOT the corporate way sadly, oversell your network, and then cut services and terminate customers for compromising the network stability by using what was advertised as available and what you actually signed up for is more the AT&T way.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
That makes sense - people can't seem to eat or drink and drive either. LOL
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
There are 2 key factors being ignored here. The average user may well be using only 400 megabytes but the "average" user hasn't had his/her iPhone for very long and quite probably hasn't discovered all the possibilities yet. Someday, he/she will. He'll start syncing his files via Dropbox, or he'll set up a Pandora station and start listening to streaming audio over long car trips. He'll pick up new podcasts, and update them over the air. The longer you have your phone, the more bandwidth you'll use as you slowly learn to do more and more things with it, get more and more apps, and so forth.
A large percentage of the so-called "heavy users" are merely early adopters, who've embraced smart phone computing to a higher degree. They aren't the norm now, but increasingly they will become it.
Moreover, the average user lives where, exactly? Some cities have ubiquitous WiFi, others, as of yet, do not. Some cities are dense and have many access points, others are spread out and suburban.
At the end of the day, tiered pricing would be a disaster. People would find their bill increasing 10 dollars every month and realistically, how long would they put up with that? I love my iPhone but I am absolutely not paying 200 dollars for data every month just because I go through about 2 gigs of data in that time frame -- nor, frankly, am I willing to cut back. I'll simply switch to another phone on another network that isn't heavily oversold and underserved.
Wow so people feel bad for AT&T that people are paying for an incredibly expensive plan and that its slowing down the network because even though their revenues are so high they refuse in infrastructure.
You'd think that, but I highly suspect you'd be wrong.
I fly small airplanes regularly, which means it's just me, I don't have a copilot to handle the radios. I do the most communicating with air traffic control during the most critical aspects of flight, which is takeoff and landing. While approaching the airport, I not only have to listen for radio calls for me, but also for aircraft around me to maintain situational awareness and ensure the controller hasn't just cleared someone onto the runway I'm about to land on. Often I'm not cleared to land until I'm on short final and starting the power and pitch adjustments to flare. I must acknowledge that clearance with a radio transmission. I'll often receive basic taxi instructions (asking where I'm going on the airport, giving me a ground control frequency) during rollout.
Pilots every day talk to ATC at the same time they are performing critical tasks in the airplane. "Dropping the airplane to fly the radio" is rarely cited as a contributing factor to a crash. Not to say it never is, but it is rare. Pilots receive NO training on how to split their attention between the airplane and the radio ... while we are admonished to always fly the airplane first, failure to acknowledge a landing clearance has the potential to have the FAA start enforcement action against you, so it's not optional.
I don't think the big danger in driving while holding a cell phone is because you're talking, I think it's because you've just taken a hand away from controlling the vehicle. Or you've got your neck in some weird position trying to hold it between your ear and shoulder. Sure, it takes some brain cells to carry on a conversation, and that DOES reduce safety somewhat, same as singing along with the radio or carrying on a conversation with a passenger. But I can walk and chew gum at the same time, I can land an airplane and talk to ATC at the same time, and I can drive and talk to someone at the same time, regardless if they're sitting next to me or I have a bluetooth in my ear.
Merde, il pleut encore!
You're ignoring the fact that the dense urban centers are already covered.
Uh, wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. I've used the iPhone in Manhattan and in San Francisco, two of the most densely-populated urban centers in the US, and there are serious coverage issues in both cities. I got better performance in Napa and Sonoma, even on the fringes of town. Towers don't just cover a physical area, they also support a population of users.
If AT&T took some of the millions it wastes every year in executard compensation and invested that cash adding a couple dozen more cell towers in Manhattan and San Francisco, they'd improve the user experience of tens of thousands of lucrative customers and guarantee themselves a healthy revenue stream for years to come. But like most boardrooms in this country, AT&T's is packed full of brown-nosing, greedy psychopaths hell bent on grabbing as much cash as they can today without the slightest concern regarding what happens tomorrow.
You can bet that when the iPhone becomes available via another carrier, there will be a stampede of customers away from AT&T and their financials will go straight into the toilet. Then they'll probably beg the taxpayers for a bailout.
Welcome to unregulated "capitalism", where a bunch of slick lunatics in $2,000 suits eat all of their seed corn in the spring, then piss and moan in the fall that they're starving, before demanding that the peasants come feed them.
One of these days, the peasants are gonna wise up, and our fatted executive class is gonna find itself on the dinner plate.
Fix the damn network, this argument is crap. if the amount of data use is killing the network then why the hell are the pushing broadband cards and netbooks which have much larger data usage than an Iphone.
If I remember correctly, AT&T has about 2,000 towers currently. Microcells like the old Ricochet modems mounted to street lights would do more for areas that saturate existing bandwidth, and when you talk about rural areas it seems like you need an aerial platform to make density work.
But artificial scarcity is the key to margin... so... don't expect much change.
Look, bandwidth really cannot be the problem because otherwise Japan would already be hitting the limits
Are you so sure that they currently use the same amount of bandwidth?
They have had fancier phones for longer but the impression I got was they were mostly texting.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I used to work for AT&T back before the SBC merger, and I can assure you, this is exactly what they said about 3G. While all of the other carriers were rolling out fast CDMA-based networks with associated data networks, AT&T was in the dark ages with its proprietary TDMA network. They spent a lot of time excusing this by saying that they were building a new 3G network. This may or may not be the same 3G technology they're using now, but I stress that it took them at least five more years (plus the transition to a completely different non-3G network technology --- GSM) before any of it actually happened.
If driving a car carried the same level of requirements as flying an airplane, I'd agree. But frankly, pilots need a lot more training and have to obey a lot more rules than drivers do. If getting a drivers license involved as many regulatory hurdles as getting a pilot's license does, then I'm certain we'd have much safer highways.
But it would come with costs that the public is probably unwilling to pay.
One thing I'd note, however, is that everything you mention is in regards to one thing: Flying and landing the airplane.
You're right in that it takes lots of concentration in order to do this well. As you say, you need to communicate with ATC as well as listen to other radio calls. You're doing all these tasks simultaneously.
Now lets add in a conversation with your sweetheart about dinner plans on a different radio channel. And let's also include trying to find a music radio station that isn't playing an advertisement.
You certainly wouldn't be trying to do all these other things while trying to land an airplane, would you?
There's the difference. In the case of landing an airplane, all of these things going on improve your ability to accomplish your task so your brain is remaining focused on the task. In the case of a car, all these things going on are a distraction to what you are trying to accomplish--namely maneuvering a couple thousand pounds of vehicle.
GSM is garbage - the standard is old and outdated, which is why most US carriers, including the CDMA guys, are moving forward to LTE anyways. And they don't need government mandating anything - the industry is moving towards this on its own.
The rest of your post sounds reasonable, although I highly doubt your proposals are politically feasible. I do really like the "no roaming" bit, although I wonder if it will look like utility deregulation, where the benefits to the public never materialize.
Not meaning to be argumentative, but I think it's important to bear in mind two things that may affect how well your parallel with flying aircraft works for driving whilst talking on a hands free phone. The first is that pilots are, well, pilots. You go through a lot of training to become a pilot, especially a professional one. I'm sure there are better and worse pilots, but they're all pretty qualified people. I'm not sure you can translate that to the general mass of car drivers. Pilots have had the bottom quartile removed in a way that motorists haven't. Secondly, in a similar sort of way, flying a plane is, well, flying a plane. You know you're in a serious situation and you're concentrating on what you're doing. A car driver should be doing that but typically, let's face it, is not in the same headspace as a pilot landing a plane. And the conversation that a pilot is having is about what you're doing as well. You're not talking about work or sex or plans for the night (I hope), you're listening for information that will tell you whether it's time to pull up or lower the landing gear or whatever. Your attention, even if monitoring different sources of information, is on the task.
I mean, you're the pilot, so correct me if I'm wrong, but these are things that occur to me. And don't base it on whether you can "walk and chew gum" at the same time, base it on whether you know anyone who can't - I think most of us do!
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Fascinating how your sig refers to liberty yet you propose to take away the liberty of those who don't do things how you want them to do it.
640 kB, out of the IBM PC's total memory of 1 MB, was definitely enough for user applications in an age where VisiCalc came in a 27 kB executable, yes. As I understand it, that was what Mr. William Gates III was talking about; Operating systems, even kindergarten-level boot loaders like DOS, need some memory of their own too.
Anyway: Usage grows to fill available memory and bandwidth, independent on actual need, it seems. So any amount is sufficient, but a higher amount is just "more sufficient" in that it can support more usage ideas.
Well, the same can be said for having someone next to you in the car... so let's just eliminate multi-passenger vehicles while we're at it.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
This is similar to the situation for law enforcement, emergency responders, taxi drivers, etc.
Your radio conversation is directly related to the activity at hand, and therefore does not impair your situational awareness. In other words, you are still only doing one thing at a time - flying - while using the radio as a tool to perform that task.
Car drivers on cell phones who are generally talking about something completely unrelated to driving, such as where to meet their mistresses for lunch, are trying to do two unrelated tasks at once. This splits their attention and results in impaired situational awareness, just as the GP states.
If it helps, in the UK we have around 52,000 3G masts across four carriers (most are shared masts), and we're a far smaller country.
http://www.mobilemastinfo.com/information/fact_sheets/third_generation.htm
Well, while they are all related to landing the airplane, you are doing a lot of tasks.
On a typical VFR approach your concentration is outside the airplane. However, there are gear to be lowered, flaps to be lowered (in steps, not all at once), mixtures and propeller controls to be moved, throttles to be adjusted, and you ought to recheck all that once or twice before landing to make sure you haven't forgot something (like the landing gear!).
I don't think ATC telling me to make the first turn off "if able" is helping me land the airplane, neither actually, is them telling me I'm cleared to land, after all I don't need nor receive a clearance to land at a non-towered airport. It's a systematic safety check, so while it helps ensure I own the runway for the next couple of minutes, it doesn't really help me land the airplane.
True, all the things I'm doing are concentrated on flying the airplane, but it's splitting my attention several ways none the less.
Merde, il pleut encore!
Football without referees is usually called a riot. Although if it's that American thing they call football and you take away the refs, well, you get soccer.
First, I'm NOT a "professional" pilot, by which I mean I do not get money for flying airplanes. I have commercial, instrument, and multi-engine ratings, I do not hold and do not want an instructor certificate.
The air carrier guys get almost constant recurrent training, or at least a part 121 ride every 6 months, but they also have two crew members up there so they can divy up the roles. The air carriers operate under the same rules I do, PLUS a bunch more. Not so private pilots. We merely have to pass a flight review given by a certificated instructor every two years. While this is more than your average driver's license renewal, the minimum is 1 hour of ground instruction and 1 hour in the air. Rarely does a flight review go beyond that.
I honestly think almost anyone can become a private pilot. An instrument rating, maybe not, because it's a TON more work, though even that is being reduced as GPS becomes commonplace.
I just don't see that having a conversation on bluetooth regarding your dinner plans tonight as being any different than having that same conversation with the person sitting next to you. At least when you're on bluetooth, you're not tempted to look over at the person you're talking to.
Merde, il pleut encore!
I'd love to see actual research that backs up this claim. The claim may be correct, and I may be unique, but I don't feel any less distracted dealing with ATC when flying then I do when I'm talking on bluetooth while driving. Having seen no research one way or the other, it's difficult to say who's right here.
Merde, il pleut encore!
... at&t apologist.
On this note, I hope that AT&T is aware that most of their customers were from Verizon, and would probably switch back in no-time when Verizon gets the iPhone (wich they will)
(unless someone stupid gets behind the wheel of the policy machine) ...this is like asking cable-modem users to pay for more bandwidth just because everyone in the neighborhood shares the same wire. Should we also charge higher bandwidth rates to people in high traffic areas? and during high traffic times? Let's just switch to nights and weekends megabytes. Let's also charge people extra if they access a server outside their local area. We can lump in a huge fee if their megabytes go to a server in another country, and we can force them to sign up for an international plan on top of that. Oh, but we can give them a free megabyte if that megabyte goes to another AT&T phone in their family data plan. That will make the customer satisfied.
Look people, stop complaining about your cell phone bandwidth. It will ALWAYS be slower than your WiFi connected to a dedicated land-link, and it will ALWAYS be slower wherever their are more users because that's the inherent nature of a full coverage infrastructure. No wireless service provider (including the WiFi at your local coffee shop) guarantees all your packets will arrive untouched and in order at server X in time Y. That's the nature of a packet switched network. That's what you're buying. You're buying access to the Internet, the same as anyone else. Sure some pipes are bigger than others, but there you're buying a MAXIMUM based on the technology involved in the first link, not an assured amount of data to your destination. And even the first link must necessarily be shared on a wireless platform-- there is no wire and only so much band in the spectrum. And what about total data? Well, should a rural 1000MB user pay a huge tiered price, even though the 1000 one meg users in the city are the ones actually influencing the slowdown? Fair billing under a tiered system is impossible, if fair is defined as those who cause more congestion pay more, as pegging an individual as causing a quantifiable amount of congestion (or "unfairness to others") is impossible, or at the least not inexpensively computable. Buying an Unlimited data plan means you have the FREEDOM to use however much you need. This comes as close to fair as possible, as everyone has equal opportunity, those who cause congestion are frequently punished with a slowdown by being within the congestion themselves, and prices for the unlimited plan are set based on usage by the entire AT&T customer base. As long as AT&T holds up their side of this, it stays a largely self regulating system. You are paying the cell company to do their job and put data towers where they are needed most (i.e. assuring congestion slowdowns are not overly punishing), and for your FREEDOM from the tedium of managing data. The burden for managing the bandwidth supply is best placed on the cell company-- the ones who understand it best --whereas adding a tiered system moves the burden to the consumer, where it wastes time and is managed poorly. If a person has to think about whether they really need this extra megabyte of data they are about to consume in an application, then inevitably revenue will go down as less apps are used and less contracts signed, and at the same time value to the consumer is lost because every megabyte carries an extra burden of wasted time. Lose-lose.
To go back to the first paragraph, cell companies would be more successful if they stop treating the consumer as an infinitely rational computation machine that can make sense of a 100-page bill. Yes, the lack of freedom in a tiered package would kill the magic of the iPhone, if by magic we mean convenience of a stress-free billing environment. Anyone who has taken their iPhone to another continent knows that watching every megabyte and regularly hassling with AT&T over international billing really takes the fun (and productivity) out of iPhone use. To AT&T's credit, the only customer service problems I have ever had with them were all related to International billing-- and I have been with them b
I'd love to see actual research that backs up this claim. The claim may be correct, and I may be unique, but I don't feel any less distracted dealing with ATC when flying then I do when I'm talking on bluetooth while driving. Having seen no research one way or the other, it's difficult to say who's right here.
I'm not aware of any studies comparing general cell phone usage with task specific radio usage. In that respect, I'm just an asshole with an opinion. There has been a fair bit of research into the distraction effect of handsfree cell phone use though. Here's one http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/01/030129080944.htm to start with.
One thing to think about - if you *felt* distracted, it wouldn't be (as) dangerous, because you would tend to compensate for the risk in some way.
I think it's similar to the self-perception distortion associated with drunk driving. I know I personally have to give away my keys before the third drink, because somewhat tipsy me doesn't recognize that he's a danger behind the wheel the same way sober me would. Interestingly though, completely slaughtered me wouldn't try to drive even if he did have the keys.
I think that's probably true, but I'm not certain that Verizon wants the iPhone. It's way too open for them - which is saying something! Verizon is all about making money off of charging fees for the things other providers give you for free. I also think that their network performance is superior to AT&T's largely because they lock down their phones so dramatically in terms of features and aren't a leading provider of smartphones with a decent web browser. I tried a friend's Blackberry Storm on Verizon, and the experience sucked compared even to 1st gen iPhone.
If Verizon does get the iPhone, I think a lot of users are gonna discover their network isn't all that much better than AT&T's. Even if they don't get the iPhone, a new generation of smartphones is about to land from other vendors, and with their improved browsers and more advanced applications those smartphones will place a far greater strain on Verizon's network than their existing offerings. It'll be interesting to see how that network handles it. My guess is, not as well as people appear to be assuming it will.
It's the most visible because it's the only one that gets advertised by the media
It's most visible because it was radically different from other platforms and single-handedly changed the market. Go ahead, show me 3D gaming on phones before the iPhone. For that matter, look at phone interfaces, capabilities, and internet usage on them before the iPhone. The iPhone raised the bar, and very little has caught up with it yet. State of the art used to be Windows Mobile 6 and PalmOS - yes, Palm OS. Windows Mobile has blown it ever since, LiMo never went anywhere, and Google Android and Palm Pre very likely would not have been developed if the iPhone hadn't radically changed the market. It gets recognition for that, and it's well-deserved.
sales figures show a different story
Really? It's at 23% in the US, and 14% worldwide. And it only came out two years ago, with its famously limited capabilities at the time.
Personally I'd much rather to see a future that continues with multiple companies (of which Apple can be one), with choice, and most importantly, compatible standards so that I can release an application that Just Works on all phones
Yeah, that worked out so well on Windows and the PC world. Multiple vendors never makes things Just Work - it's the antithesis of it. Protocol incompatibilities, inconsistent hardware support, no platform direction.
Look at Apple. For example, they want to support something like OpenCL. They make sure their hardware has the proper GPU's, the OS supports it, GrandCentral is created, the compiler toolchain adds blocks, and oh yeah, they've been working on LLVM/Clang for years. NONE of that happens when you have a heterogeneous environment and no one is coordinated. Apple wants to get rid of legacy ports and bus systems - so they do it. In two years, Apple abandoned floppies, SCSI, ADB, serial, NuBus, etc. Here we are over ten years later and PC's STILL have PS/2 ports and serial ports, right next to USB 3.0. Such progress.
Note that all phones can run so called "apps". Running applications on phones has been common on all but the most basic phones for at least 5 years, and note that the market of Java smartphones is estimated at two billion.
I'm sorry - you can't possibly compare Java Midlets to iPhone applications. Nice that it has two-billion phones. I'd bet that a fraction of a percent of those users have ever cared that it's there, and those that have used it (like I used to on my PalmOS Treo - KMaps and Opera Mini) can easily see what crap it is. Ugly, slow, non-native, battery-hungry, low-performance - that's Java on a phone, and one of the reasons it's not on the iPhone. Ditto for Flash, really.
Sadly, the only thing in your post that made any sense was that Apple should be more open. And it's "should", as in it would be nice. The market has shown that they certainly don't "need" to.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Apple negotiated the current AT&T customer contract concept for the iphone - not an easy thing to do. It has brought AT&T millions of new users, and brought smart phones into the hands of millions of new users, redefining the "smart phone market". AT&T has so many new expensive data plan users to whom it was unable to sell before. People are not leaving the platform much due to problems. Yes it is expensive to run, but this whole discussion of reasons this is bad is missing the point. It has been a phenomenal success. As much as some people like to say AT&T's reputation is being ruined, I applaud them for moving forward as they have. AT&T's reputation has improved by offering such a service with such a great device. However, If I could not have an unlimited usage plan, I would not have an iphone. If it cost more than it does, I would not have bought a second phone for a family member. Requiring the data plan for the phone means AT&T has some users who pay and do not actually use the plan much. If AT&T made me pay more for higher use, and then I had problems, I would be incredibly upset and would refuse to pay for what I was not getting anyway. As a side note I have found it interesting that AT&T has not been willing to make tethering available for the iphone at any price - there are people who would pay much for it, and I can tether on a separate device with AT&T for $60/month.
Before iPhone, my cellphone bill was $29.99/month + tax. I used the phone for emergencies only. After I got an iPhone, my cell phone bills is $75.00/ month + tax. So in effect, I am paying 2.5 times as much per month MORE than I used to... AND I signed a 2 year contract with AT&T. Where is all this money going? If AT&T is paying the CEOs and the senior executives a BIGGER salary and HUGE bonus,... or distributing it to the shareholders, this is THEIR mistake. They should instead use all the profits they are making by the massively new HIGH PAYING customers and build a lot of infrastructure. If they have to double or triple their network capacity, they should. I thought that was the reason for the iPhone exclusive deal and consequently getting the ability to poach customers from other networks. If AT&T failed to capitalize on this and build their network, it is the mistake of the executives and they must all be fired...
CDMA has twice the radius as old-style GSM. That said, 40 mile radius seems stretching it. The rule of thumb I heard was 20 Km diameter for GSM and 40 km diameter for CDMA for a South African company. That's about 25 miles diameter for CDMA. And this is over relatively flat land. In New York you probably need a tower in every building.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
Ah, I see where you've gone off now. You don't seem to understand the concept of Nonverbal Communication. This is why the person being in the car is completely different to bluetooth. You know when you go around a curve too fast and someone grabs the "Oh Shit!" handle? Or the sensation you get when someone tenses up beside you because some moron ran the red light and is about to slam into you? These are clues that cut the conversation short with a live person. On bluetooth, they just keep talking through your crash.
As to where your flight analogy fails is that the tower is watching you. They are looking at you, giving you clearance (telling you that they've looked around and it's ok) for you to land. The person on the other end of your bluetooth isn't looking at you telling you that no one is trying to speed through that red light.
Another instance where your analogy fails is that (you've admitted) the hardest part of flying is take off and landing (despite this, you yourself admit that people still crash because of wireless communication). You know it's hard and you know you have to concentrate. Driving through and intersection is the most dangerous (as in where most accidents occur) part of driving, but I guarantee that no one pays any more attention then.
Try this, next time you go flying, when you're landing, start hitting on the control tower while you try to land.
Handsfree is not safe. Your protests sound like the protests of people who were against seat-belts "They're more a danger than anything. I can brace myself on the dash." or people against DUI "I drive better drunk/ stoned because I have to pay more attention."
You'd think that, but I highly suspect you'd be wrong.
You'd think that, but I highly suspect you have little idea what you're talking about.
This Wikipedia article cites numerous studies with different methodologies which disagree with you. One study found lower risks with hands-free phones, but still an increased risk from driving with your mind on the road. Check out the "Handsfree device" section cites in particular. Conversing with a passenger is (probably) safer, but the difference between holding a cell and calling hands-free is at best minor, at worst zero.
I don't think the big danger in driving while holding a cell phone is because you're talking, I think it's because you've just taken a hand away from controlling the vehicle
There you're close: The big danger is dialing. If you must yammer while blithely careening down the road, threatening the lives and limbs of innocent children, at least respect others enough to use voice-dialing. Better yet, realize that your conversations aren't more important than the lives of others, turn the damn phone off, and keep your entire attention where it should be: On the stereo controls.
Apple could fix this "problem" on their own... develop a CDMA version of the iPhone to be used with the Verizon and Sprint networks, and watch millions of frustrated iPhone users flock to those networks when their 2 year AT&T contracts run out. Bingo... you just load balanced all of the iPhone traffic over several cellular networks, "fixing" the problem free market style.
Hell... Apple could offer their existing GSM iPhone on TMobile even faster to "fix" this problem... all they need to do is get rid of that horrid exclusivity contract, and work with TMobile to get visual voicemail working with their network.
It's hell of a lot easier to kill someone else while driving a car, than to kill someone else while flying a single-passenger airplane.
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My wife and I could save the $60 per month and just use WiFi when we need hi speed data. I don't feel bad for AT&T.
Public utility deregulation worked out perfectly fine, unless you live in the Southwestern united states.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Wireless spectrum isn't property. Denying ownership of spectrum isn't taking away their liberty.
The EM spectrum is a finite resource and is a natural monopoly. The system we have now is so inefficient that Americans unhappily pay extraordinary rates for wireless services but there is no incentive for any company to reduce the price of their services because there is no real competition. Consumers frequently hop from network to network in search of the least evil company with the best handset. The system sucks balls right now. "Free market" capitalism isn't fixing the problem either.
Corporate profit isn't liberty.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
There are a lot of definitions of liberty. None of them revolve around guarantees for corporations to make a profit, or to gouge their customers to whatever extent they choose.
Liberty is freedom from oppression and the right to choose your own destiny. I'm not saying we need to remove the wireless carriers. Just saying that a radical change in the structure of ownership and control in the wireless EM spectrum and wireless towers. What I propose to do to the wireless industry isn't far different from what the lending servicer industry has done voluntarily.
Now, loan services receive fees for administering loans that they don't own. What I'm proposing is that the feds directly own the towers and the spectrum. Wireless carriers use contracts and handset subsidies to act as servicers for a national wireless network. The existing companies make a profit, and indeed see a dramatic reduction in the complexity of their operations. They still have an opportunity to deliver branded handsets to consumers jam packed with "value-add" services(the permanently installed shit handsets come preloaded with).
FYI, you can't really label me a socialist. If you knew me at all, you'd know I'm quite moderate on a whole host of issues. I'm not on the left, the right, the red, the blue, the in, the out, whatever political labels you can think of-I'm not in that group.
If you're really interested, here's a rundown of my stance on hot-button political topics.
I support gay marriage.
I support personal gun ownership rights.
I support federalization of natural monopolies for industries unable to operate fairly.
I support drug legalization.
I support abortion.
I support an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq.
I support the war in Afghanistan.
I support a complete ban on line item vetoes, signing statements, bill riders, or bills that cannot be written in plain language.
I support the repeal of immunity to telecom companies involved in illegal spying on americans.
I support the complete exposure and criminal investigation of all those who colluded with the government, including those government operatives who initiated the program to spy on american communications.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
In theory, Java Midlets are not so bad. The problem lies in the complexity of the ecosystem:
1) Lots of J2ME phones means lots of incompatible implementations.
2) The committees in charge of defining the technical specifications moves at a glacial pace.
3) Provisionning and payment systems are outside of the scope of J2ME, so everyone had to build their own.
4) The list goes on and on.
J2ME failed but I'm not sure that it ever had a chance to succeed. But don't blame Java. Blackberry phones are 100% Java (except the kernel) and they are doing OK. Why? Because a single company designs the phones, the OS and the APIs for the applications and came up with a relatively simple way to application developers to make money. Humm, it reminds me of someone, but who?
Nobox: Only simple products.
All I hear out of the people saying the iphone is strangling the ATT network is WAAA! As an iphone user, I rarely ever go over around 100-200MB a Month. Tiered pricing will not work because it's kinda like the gas pumps, you're pumping gas and you get distracted and you go a penny or two over the dollar amount you wanted.... Do you think that gas station is going to give you a break and knock those pennies off especially if you pay by card where it is automatic. I for one would be upset if I used .5 over 100MB and they charged me an additional $20 because you know it will be some ridiculous number like $19.99 to make it sound good.
The solution is to use some of those mega profits they get and improve infrastructure. What about that nationwide wifi plan that was supposed to happen.... iphones can use wifi, put up wireless access points that only ATT phones can access and that would reduce the amount of traffic.
~I bet you were looking down here for an awesome siggy like everyone else..sorry to disappoint~
Or the Northeastern United States.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
The thing is, I wasn't referring only to the exclusive leasing of the spectrum. Every aspect of your plan reduces liberty.
I'm old enough to remember when it was an expensive treat to call long distance. Today you can get unlimited long distance for pennies.
That's what happens when you get the government out of the way. Regulation prevents competition. If the (fed, state, & local) government's only involvement was to enforce laws against collusion and unfair practices, the cell phone industry would be in far better shape.
We don't have "free market" capitalism with current levels of governmental involvement.
You misrepresent what I said. I did NOT say talking on the radio caused crashes, I said it is rarely listed as a contributing factor. I have never seen it listed as a primary factor.
And, it's been proven to me time and time again, that no, the tower is NOT looking at me, and may not be looking at the runway either. Safety is my responsibility, not the towers. Even says so in the regs.
Given that I'm straight, and I can't remember the last time I talked to female controller, I doubt I'll be hitting on the tower controller any time soon. Pity that, the few female controllers I've delt with have been excellent.
I'm not protesting at all. I'm just drawing a parallel between flying an aircraft and talking to ATC and talking with a bluetooth while driving.
Interestingly enough, another poster linked to a wikipedia article that agrees with the premise that handfreee is no more safe than holding a phone. However, it also says there are conflicting results on exactly how distracting a passenger is, and in fact talking to a passenger may be no more safe than talking on a bluetooth. Which says to me this may all be much ado about nothing.
Merde, il pleut encore!
BTW, I'm referring to the mess that is wireless communications with the "that's what happens..."
Also, looks like we registered for /. within a couple days of each other...
-J
Heck, I often use voice dialing even when I'm NOT driving. Far easier. Interesting that the studies comparing talking to a passenger vs. conversing on a cell are mixed, I don't think I'd classify it as "probably" safer, at best I'd say "possibly" safer. I think it would be quite revealing to see studies of things like listening to music vs. listening to the news vs talking on a cell. Might be a bit surprising.
No, my conversations are not more important than the lives of people around me. But then again, I have no trouble shifting my focus as necessary, even if it means asking the person I'm talking to to repeat themselves because I've shifted enough of my focus outside the vehicle that I'm no longer listening to them.
Merde, il pleut encore!
No. The real problem is that FCC has only made a very small, very expensive allocations to GSM use. The equipment can support many more channels but the frequencies are legally limited in the US. Thus why bandwidth is bad here and much better elsewhere. Ditto for cost concerns. Wireless carriers have paid a lot of more at auction to the US Government than similar allocations cost in other countries.
See for instance this recent article at the wsj
I don't use anywhere close to 400 MB a month. My iPhone spends more time on WiFi than 3G or EDGE. When I am on 3G or EDGE, it works fine. No, I don't live in a big city. What about all the other people that don't?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Doesn't make it any safer, the problem is the conversation with someone you can't see.
A grand, unfounded assertion. When flying a small aircraft under Instrument Flight Rules, I routinely speak with someone I can't see (the controller), listen to other conversations to visualize the traffic around me; and at the same time fly on course, on speed, and on altitude; and navigate and anticipate what coming down the road.
Communication with "someone you can't see" can be done, and done well -- even in the face of high traffic, turbulence, and a difficult approach. Compared to hard IFR flying, driving is a joke. Those who can't drive and talk at the same time probably shouldn't have a license.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
In Germany where T-Mobile runs the iPhone. They give you 1GB per month at 3G speeds (or 4GB for the highest priced subscription) everything above gets throttled to GPRS speeds (64k max). I'm sure AT&T could find a proper rate to get their network stable.
I fly small airplanes regularly, which means it's just me, I don't have a copilot to handle the radios. I do the most communicating with air traffic control during the most critical aspects of flight, which is takeoff and landing.
Do you land with another plane 10m in front, one more at the same distance behind you, and yet more on both sides?
Because that's how a typical city traffic looks if you scale it to speeds. I strongly suspect that, even during takeoff and landing (except for the few very brief moments), a pilot actually has more margin to correct a momentary mistake than a car driver.
You stream? Really?
64000 bits per second for 8 hours a day 5 days a week for a four week month is 4,394 MiB. Thats something of an extreme example but 300 MiB only averages to 22 minutes per day of 64kbit/sec streaming or 11 minutes per day of 128kbit/sec streaming.
Less confused now?
Its an auction. If they paid more in the US, it's because they bid up the price on each other. If they didn't think it was worth the amount they paid, they wouldn't have made the bid.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
According to Harold Welte, some African operators are setting up their GSM equipment to skip every second TDMA time slot, resulting in an almost 70 Km (~43 mi) range at the expense of halving the capacity of a cell. It's an interesting "hack", although not the best solution for high-population areas.
And when you say "CDMA", you are presumably meaning IS-95. CDMA is just a multiplexing method that is used by IS-95 (2G), CDMA2000 (3G), and UMTS/W-CDMA; the 3G evolution of GSM. It's also used by GPS.
I know I've exceeded 100GB on my Sprint Mobile Broadband card. For a while I was using it as my main connection at home and everywhere else, and with two people and a lot of downloading it was easy.
The best part it's a Business Unlimited account and for $59.99 a month it actually is unlimited. They don't put 1,000 place separators (commas) in the "Bytes transferred" number on the bill, so I was pretty amazed when I marked the places and figured out I'd transferred that much data. Sprint's network didn't have any problems at all, as far as I can tell.
Putting moderation advice in your
The maximum range of a cell tower is only useful if you are in the middle of nowhere where you don't expect many people to be using their phones. The real limitation is that a tower can only support a limited number of simultaneous connections. In order to solve this problem, the carriers adjust the radius of the tower, by adjusting the downward tilt of the antennas and probably the transmitting power as well. In very high density areas the radius will be very small, so that they can install lots of towers to support the large number of users. This means that calculating how many towers you need is not a simple mathematical problem, but has to factor in population density, subscriber density, and knowledge of which areas are currently experiencing problems--as I am sure that are lots of areas where data speeds are just fine.
I'll simply switch to another phone on another network that isn't heavily oversold and underserved.
Did you mean "I'll simply switch to another phone on another network in another country"? Or what U.S. network are you talking about? (The article is on a U.S. site and about the U.S. market.)
Everyone here is looking askance at AT&T. And their policies may be problematic. But AT&T has incentive to build more towers and that incentive is called "Verizon." Of course in the iPhone-only world, there is no incentive but AT&T actually sells more than just the iPhone.
Their contract with Apple ends next year, unless the two companies want to renew. Problem is that since Verizon uses different signaling than does AT&T, if you want to switch to Verizon, you would have to purchase a different, Verizon-capable iPhone. Winner here is Apple, because they pocket the money for the phone.
I grew up in an era when all telephone calls, local or long-distance cost money and AT&T was the only telephone company. You had to rent your phone from the phone company and you had to pay for every call. That system tended to cause people to use the telephone for messages, not to chat. AT&T dropped local calling rates in the 1960s and stay-at-home moms everywhere started to carry on long conversations on the telephone with their neighbors. Long-distance remained a medium of message.
What changed? I believe that AT&T realized that there was pressure from their subscribers (nearly everyone in the US) to change. You still had to pay per call, but you didn't have to pay per minute. And the cost per call was pretty cheap. So long conversations over local calls became the norm. I don't recall hearing that the infrastructure was, somehow, overloaded.
I'll bet the real reason for this change was an overall computerization of the system. Since AT&T had introduced some pretty killer automation on their system, it was cost-effective to do this. When telephone companies started doing VOIP, the cost of long-distance came down and the era of unlimited long distance calling was ushered in. They're still using the same lines, folks, they're just packing the data in better.
The deal with radio signaling is that the costs are decreasing all of the time. Back when the government proposed digital television, there was no way that stations could broadcast a full high-definition signal in the bandwidth allocation offered by the FCC. Television companies immediately came up with encoding schemes that would compress the signal so that it would fit within the available bandwidth. In fact, it was discovered that the spectrum offered by the FCC was a real boon: Television stations could actually broadcast three separate stations within the digital bandwidth allocation and Congress had to come down on the Networks to require that they broadcast a 16x9 HD signal when the Networks announced that they had no specific plans to transition to HD and that they might use the extra two channels to make their O&Os more money.
Sure, the radio spectrum is limited. But digital compression keeps getting better and that opens up those limits. A great example is how cable systems are able to send many more channels (and many of them HD channels) over the same coax cable as they used to use when it was limited to some 90 channels (all standard definition). Additionally, they're also able to do high-speed internet at the same time over the same cable. Frankly, I think the bandwidth is more limited on that coax cable than is in the spectrum for cellular telephony. So I think arguments about lack of bandwidth are missing the point. Also arguments about building more cellular receivers and towers are, likewise missing the point. AT&T wants to compete with the other cell phone companies
The iPhone is a real money maker for AT&T (as well as Apple). AT&T keeps adding subscribers and pulling them away from other carriers because of the iPhone. If your iPhone suddenly cannot connect, or data slows a little, you will eventually get it, so AT&T can "throttle" data and keep happy customers. Additionally, Apple might have a s
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
> 2. FCC mandates all wireless carriers switch to GSM.
Er, actually GSM is an officially-deprecated dinosaur. Even in Europe. 3G "GSM" is actually "W-CDMA".
Now, that doesn't stop everyone from CALLING W-CDMA on a 3G GSM phone "GSM", but it doesn't MAKE it "GSM". GSM is a variant of TDMA (3 virtual channels that share a single frequency channel by sequentially using their own exclusive timeslices within it). TDMA is the reason why GSM-based devices cause a bursty buzzing sound if they're placed too close to an amplifier... the buzzing noise is caused by the click when the carrier rapidly cuts off for a fraction of a second, and the next phone's carrier cuts. Think: the click made by a Commodore 64 when you changed the volume register (which was really a wavetable DAC hardwired to a circuit emulating a single byte of RAM, with the various SID effects produced by directly manipulating the apparent value of that virtual byte).
Need more proof? Read up about picocells. Picocells that handle CDMA and *ONLY* 3G GSM are fairly cheap, and becoming commodities. Picocells that handle oldschool GSM *and* CDMA/WCDMA("3G GSM") are quite a bit more expensive, because THEY require implementation of two completely different technologies. Adding the ability to roam on a European 3G network to an American CDMA phone (a-la Verizon's Touch HD, I believe) is more of a political and business decision than a technological problem. Adding true GSM capabilities to a CDMA phone requires a second radio module & baseband processor, because the technologies are completely different.
I pay out the ass for data(Rogers Canada) whether I use it or not, so I usually stay on 3G and use what I pay for instead of using wifi. Yes 3G is a little slower than wifi but I don't get anything off my bill if I don't use the network so I'm going to be using the network instead of wifi.
Driving through and intersection is the most dangerous (as in where most accidents occur) part of driving, but I guarantee that no one pays any more attention then.
You would be wrong to guarantee that, as I usually look both ways when going through an intersection because I am paranoid that someone will run the light and T-Bone me, I do the same with rail road crossings, and especially in parking lots.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
That actually brings up another good point, though feel free to correct me if I'm wrong--I am not a pilot and you obviously are.
The communication with ATC, from what little I know of flying, isn't really much of a "conversation." They tell you things and you acknowledge. You tell them things and they acknowledge. Short, curt, direct, and to the point. Not a whole lot of "Hey, ATC, what are your plans for the weekend?" type of stuff.
So these are brief messages which are informational inputs. When ATC says that you are cleared to land on such and such runway, the response is "Roger." Not a lot of dialog going on.
I think there's a difference between doing alot of tasks simultaneously which accomplish a singular goal and attempting to accomplish two goals simultaneously. Landing an airplane means keeping up to date with a number of different things going on inside and outside your airplane. In the case of cell phones and driving, however, it's usually about accomplishing two different things (eg, maneuvering through traffic while simultaneously talking to someone about what's for dinner).
In summary, original poster needs to eat rat poison and die a horrible death for suggesting it!
Were I the CEO of Verizon Wireless, right now, I would privately do everything I could to give Apple a hard enough time that they would stick with AT&T as their exclusive US provider. I would then do nothing to dash the wishful thinking of iPhone fans who fill up slash-dot and industry logs with wishful thinking that Verizon even wants to offer the iPhone at the end of Apple's current contract agreement with AT&T.
I wish AT&T well and fell sympathy for the no-win situation they are in. They are already in the midst of a multi-billion dollar network upgrade. Whether they can build enough new bandwidth to get ahead of the demand curve in the next one or two years is doubtful.
Right now, I not only have a conventional smart phone with Verizon, I have traded in my cellular USB air-card with for one of Verizon's "Mi-Fi" (MiFi2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot.) http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=4726
Wirelessly supporting up to 5 devices within 4 meters of my backpack where the Mi-Fi lives, it not only connects my laptop to the web, but my iPod Touch as well!
So.my cell phone works with clear calls that do not drop and my iPod Touch works as a neat gizmo that draws on the Verizon network.
Yes, it means I have to own an extra device, but geeks like me won't settle for a single device that gives crappy results.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
To screw the consumer.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Welcome to unregulated "capitalism", where a bunch of slick lunatics in $2,000 suits eat all of their seed corn in the spring, then piss and moan in the fall that they're starving, before demanding that the peasants come feed them.
One of these days, the peasants are gonna wise up, and our fatted executive class is gonna find itself on the dinner plate.
Ironic turn of phrase considering Stalin's Agricultural policies. Maybe it isn't "capitalism" but "humans."
Like anyone can even know that
This guy is either trolling or is very naive about RF.
"It's not that hard to make sure one's service doesn't interfere with the next."
Give me a break.
+= E
OS X will prompt you to use the network before attaching, unless you've made it a "preferred network" and told it to automatically attach to preferred networks.
Some 3rd party Windows drivers will automatically connect to any available network through their helper utility, but I don't think Windows itself will do that.
What often happens is that people connect to "LINKSYS" and from then on it randomly connects to other unsecured (and unconfigured) routers, since it's now a known network.
Besides, the original poster probably meant AT&T should provide WiFi for the phones, or that consumers could use WiFi that they already have authorization for. We want to use the bandwidth we already have, not steal someone else's.
All of these people posting about the split concentration really are missing the point. I strongly believe there should be a test of this type to weed out those who just can't split their attention safely, there is no reason that those of us who can should be legislated out of it. I am no more distracted by a bluetooth link to my cell phone then I am by a bird flying by, or the radio playing, or another pasenger. Maybe this is the benefit of ADD, but I can split my attention quite well without degrading my driving ability. I live in a very heavily congested area, and I can say quite confidently that I have never had a problem talking on the phone. I can say however that I would never be able to drive my clutch while holding the phone...that would be impossible.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You sir win my prize for the most off the wall response to any of my posts so far. I did not request this option on my car, nor would I have. This was a included feature when I bought my car. It appears that Toyota has moved to putting them in all their cars, as even the base model Tundra also comes equipped with this feature. You can make jokes about bluetooth being gay, but I will use whatever feature makes it easier to accomplish a given activity.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Once upon a time, this was the way almost all phone services were charged. You paid a per-minute fee, graduated on your usage of the system--more for long-distance and local. Yet more and more, phone companies have moved in the direction of flat-rate plans. Why? Because consumers don't like to have to keep track of their usage--they see value in having an expected no-surprises charge on their bill, and they are willing to pay a premium in order not to have to worry about it.
So yes, AT&T could do this, if they wanted to lose money--and customers, who will gravitate to companies that offer flat-rate plans.
Open the iPhone to be available on multiple carriers, to spread out the congestion.
... just sayin'
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
AT&T sucks in pretty much every way. Most likely explanation is they have a crappy network, Sprint has the pre and Verizon has the Blackberry. The latter being incredibly popular and data intensive and their networks don't fold up under the load. News flash AT&T or Cingular or whatever they call themselves this week are super lame. They recently charged me a discount fee I hate them with all my heart.
In general his editorials (which is what this article is) lack intellectual rigor and reek of fanboyism. IT is a shame that slate can't find a better technology writer. I regularly read slate and I have yet to read an article by Farhad that was truly insightful.
Farhad, once again, has courted "controversy" by writing something totally full of poo-poo.
Not only AT&T, but all networks, have got to realize that the iPhone may be first, but it's only the beginning. If they don't give us the bandwidth, somebody will.
I'm old enough to remember when it was an expensive treat to call long distance. Today you can get unlimited long distance for pennies.
Would the tremendous increase in bandwidth and reduction in costs of changing to a digital infrastructure have anything to do with this, or is it all just down to competition?
In the UK, the telecoms provider (BT) was privatised, not as a result of any political ideology, but so that they could borrow the billions required to digitise the network without the government's involvement. In the end however, they didn't need to borrow anything as the massive savings they made from digitising the first parts of the network more than paid for each subsequent upgrade.
Being digital, the new infrastructure enabled BT to do many things from a computer keyboard that they previously had to schedule a highly trained engineer out to do and BT soon found that it was making a profit from the standing charges alone - any money made from people actually making calls was a (huge) bonus.
All this success was sold as being as a result of privatisation, rather than digitisation, which in turn led to a rush to sell off anything that wasn't nailed down - usually at, what later investigations found to be, significantly below real value.
Of course none of the subsequent utility sell-offs had anything that corresponded to BT's digitisation and have instead led to inefficient monopolies. In the fine tradition of BT however, the privatised companies rarely actually have to put their hands in their own pockets as all upgrades are paid for by large, government approved levies added to the bills - long before any benefit (if any) to the consumer is actually provided.
These levies ensure that dividends are not affected by the need to invest in the infrastructure but, being able to have their cake and eat it, the value of these infrastructure improvements (paid for by the customers and not the shareholders) significantly boosts the value of the company and so the share price.
This [ ] left intentionally [ ]
An item's value, by definition, is what someone is willing to pay for it. There is the chance that someone paid more than they're likely to make from the purchase, but that's their own fault if so- they knew at bid time precisely what they were getting. Nor is it likely to be true, there's a high demand for cellular services.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I have to ask, and maybe someone who modded this can answer as AC, how exactly was this funny? Insightful, Interesting, sure, but Funny?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Which is something that I try to point out when various Vehicular GPS' refuse to accept input while the vehicle is moving. My Dad has to go through a convoluted routine to put the integrated GPS into a service mode every time he starts his car so that it is willing to accept input while in motion, such as from the passenger...
I see it as another example of "Nanny State" thinking where they feel necessary (or in some cases may be mandated by law) to protect us from the very possibility of our own stupidity.
So... what part of having the FCC "taking a look at the output spectrum" prior to issuing a license did you not understand?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The best part is that if we complain about things like this, we get accused of being communists.
AT&T doesn't have that option until the point in time the FCC magically pulls more frequencies out of their ass.
All ready done.
They auctioned them off last year. Verizon bought most of them.
This doesn't mean that Verizon gets them all. This means that Verizon gets first choice. And someone with a different signaling method (like AT&T) may be able to "piggyback" on the Verizon frequencies (I'm sure with proper payment to Verizon).
Today, with compression, you can fit an entire HD video stream in the same hard disk space (and bandwidth) as a regular NTSC or PAL signal used to sit. You can do the same thing with radio.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Wasn't subject to opinion, a few years ago some folk decided to study the increase in safety offered by various hands free options for phones and found NONE.
Later research was done to find out why.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
It's founded, check earlier in this thread for the many links to the studies and research.
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea